Saving the accidents for later

It's not just the private pilots who are going to have a good layer of rust when the lockdown is over, but also their instructors. We don't generally have simulators, we are all going to need a refresher, so who is going to kick start some flying? I'm not talking about three landings and off we go, so we can carry passengers, I'm thinking of the pilots and clubs who more or less shut up shop over the winter. i managed three flights in three different aircraft (one of them an autogyro) between the runway being dry enough to use and being shut up at home, a single week. That makes me one of the most recent pilots in our club. Not only, that, but it's the town hall staff that cut the grass. Has it been done recently? I doubt it, and it was quite long enough at the beginning of March. Interesting times, indeed.

A very topical and timely post. Here on the western extremes of the Canadian Prairies, my gliding club has, in most years, started flying by now, or is very close to starting operations. This year is going to be very different and even if we didn't have the lockdown, 15 cm of new snow overnight would have delayed things!

Your comment about rust is applicable every year to pilots in Canadian gliding clubs, except of course to clubs on the coastal fringe of Lotus Land aka BC. My club requires all glider pilots, including private owners, to do a Spring Checkout consisting of two dual flights, one of which includes stalling and spinning. The tow pilots have a similar checkout which includes slow flight and stalling - spinning is prohibited in our towplanes.

A question arises - who checks the checkers? What we do is to have the CFI and CTP fly with other experienced pilots and they do a mutual checkout. It is very noticeable to me, that I am quite rusty after a five to six month hiatus and I am cautious on my first few flights.

Most gliding clubs in the UK face this problem every spring, with pilots who have not flown since the previous summer. Nothing new in that. All the clubs I have been in have had a core of instructors, I was one, who flew all the year round teaching people to fly in winter ready for the next spring. I remained 'current' throughout the whole of a long career in gliding. In spite of what you might think, you can soar in every month of the year in the UK, as my log book will attest. As for rustiness - yes it does exist, but for a well trained pilot it should be dealt with by a few duals. My own experience of this was when, after a 28 year layoff, I decided to see if flying was like roller skating, something you never forget. I booked a week at my local club, had three duals, and was sent solo. But then gliding is a 'hands on' kind of flying, Airline flying these days seems to need so little time actually hands on. Maybe that needs to be addressed..